In Response To: "That Major Problem" With Disney Movies

When you teach the course that I do ("Decoding Disney"), you come to expect the question that I usually get asked around the start of each semester. A student will shyly, hesitantly, tentatively raise his or her hand and ask, "Will I hate Disney by the end of this course too?"

It's the "too" that always surprises me -- the implication that, since I teach a course focused on analyzing Disney movies, I must not be a fan of the company or the films.

And that really couldn't be further from the truth:

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

I'm a firm believe that you can love something and look at it with a critical eye -- that's part of what makes my job so great. I get to teach something I enjoy -- everyday I get to stand in front of a classroom full of intelligent young minds and talk to them -- with them -- about something I truly love.

Am I objective all the time? Of course not. I'd be lying if I said my knee-jerk reaction to a lot of Disney criticism wasn't something along the lines of, "OMG Y U HATE DISNEY?!?!" But initial reactions fade -- and I'm left with ideas marinating in the back of my mind, ideas which I'm constantly thinking about as I go about my day.

So a few days ago, when a friend shared this Washington Post article with me -- "Researchers Have Found A Major Problem With 'The Little Mermaid' and Other Disney Movies" -- my initial reaction was, yes, an eyeroll of epic proportions.

And then -- as these things inexplicably do on the Internet -- the story went viral.

Well, maybe it's not so inexplicable: it's a news story purporting to have uncovered some sinister quality of Disney movies (more on that key word, "purporting," later).

And the majority of the media outlets reporting on this story do focus on the negative. A cursory glance of the stories I've saved from Facebook posts reveals that:

i09 says that researchers are trying to "figure out how harmful Disney Princesses are to kids"; Disney still has a "princess problem"; even the Huffington Post says that "a disturbing trend" has been  uncovered. 

Okay. I'll bite. What exactly is this "disturbing," "harmful" trend? The original source is The Washington Post article, the major points of which are:

• Jeff Guo starts with a brief history--essentially pointing out the "Waves" of princesses. The First Wave (Snow White, Cinderella & Aurora) are passive and antiquated, dreaming of love and waiting for Prince Charming. The Second Wave (Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas) were supposed to be more progressive -- spunkier.
• Then we get to the "why this matters" -- the "so what" of this study conducted by Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhower: girls watch princess movies, and "it's worth examining what the films are teaching about gender roles."
• Guo does point out that this is still preliminary research and that the initial findings were presented at a conference.
• According to Guo, the goal of the research is to "shed light on how the male and female characters in these films talk differently." 
• In the First Wave films, men and women speak "equally" -- in Sleeping Beauty, they even speak more than the men.
• However, when you get to the Second Wave films, this decreases: the films are male-dominated and there are fewer women speaking. 
• When you get to the Third Wave films, there seems to be a return to egalitarianism -- but not with Frozen, where women speak only 41% of the time. 
• Guo includes a quote from Fought, who states that, "There's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her, but there are no women doing any other things...Everybody who’s doing anything else, other than finding a husband in the movie, pretty much, is a male."
• Guo then shifts gears, pointing out that it's not only who speaks, but what they say, drawing attention to the aspect of Fought and Eisenhauer's research that focuses on compliments: namely, that over time, the number of appearance-based compliments has decreased and the number of skill-based compliments has increased. 
• The last line of the article is a quote from Fought: "That’s fine, but are these movies really so great for little girls to watch? When you start to look at this stuff, you have to question that a little bit."

The "disturbing" trend that the media is picking up on and regurgitating most likely refers to the fact that, even in movies with female protagonists*, the males out-talk the females: they don't get a voice in their own movies.

[*Aladdin should be an outlier in this discussion; while Jasmine has been officially inducted into the Princess line-up, Aladdin most definitely has a male-protagonist. It is not Jasmine's story.]

What isn't being reported -- because it doesn't make for as good a news story? doesn't make for as salacious a headline? -- is the research on the compliments, as the UPenn post is quick to point out. 

As I've read each of these news stories, here's the pattern my thoughts have taken:

1. The implication -- not necessarily from Fought and Eisenhauer; more from the media -- is that this revelation (that Disney Princess movies are harmful to the girls watching them) is new. The last line of the WP article seems to attest to that: Guo quotes Fought as saying "When you start to look at this stuff..." -- as if scholars haven't been studying and criticizing Disney for the past 30 years. Henry Giroux's "Animating Youth: The Disnification of Children's Culture" first appeared in 1995, urging parents and educators to critically engage with Disney films. Jack Zipes' widely circulated chapter, "Breaking the Disney Spell" appeared in From Mouse To Mermaid in 1995: while Zipes focuses less on gender and more on the distortion of the original literary source material, the antipathy and skepticism of Disney is clearly there. Fought and Eisenhauer's focus on language may be an original avenue into the discussion, but the conversation is by no means new.

2. There is one very valid and under-represented point being made, rather buried in the article (understandably, since it's not the focus of the research): Fought is quoted as saying "...there are no women bonding in the tavern together, singing drinking songs..." -- there's actually little female bonding depicted in the Disney princess movies period. Disney princesses aren't typically afforded female friends -- they prefer animal companionship. After all, Cinderella's relationship with her stepsisters -- even if she doesn't have her birds pluck out the stepsister's eyes at her wedding, as she does in the Brothers Grimm version -- is fraught with hostility, at least on their part. Ariel barely interacts with her six sisters -- probably to emphasize her "difference" from them. Pocahontas may be the first princess to have a female friend -- Nakoma -- but even then, the friendship isn't foregrounded. Even when the princesses are all grouped together on the official Disney Princess merchandise, they are all looking in different directions: Peggy Orenstein learned that "Disney had never marketed its characters separately from a film's release...That's why, these days...[e]ach stares off in a slightly different direction, as if unaware of the others' presence. Now that I have told you, you'll always notice it. And let me tell you, it's freaky" (13-14). 

Luckily, as Guo also notes, that is something which seems to be changing though: Tiana has Charlotte (however historically inaccurate that friendship might have been); Brave focuses on the relationship between Merida and Elinor; and Frozen is, above all else, about Elsa and Anna's relationship. 

[*This also carries over into some of Disney's non-animated, princess-related products: Maleficent focuses on the relationship between Aurora and Maleficent and, I would argue, the relationship between Emma and Regina is one of the strengths of Once Upon A Time.]

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

3. Real quick: I take issue with Fought's claim that "there's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her" -- as that seems wildly inaccurate to me. Yes, the princess movies may end with marriage or romance, but that doesn't mean that's the end-game of the whole movie--

--Snow White is just trying to survive; the prince finds her at the end of the movie

--Cinderella just wants to go to the ball and wear a pretty dress -- she doesn't even know she's dancing with the prince

--Aurora is the most problematic, because she wants to meet the boy from the forest -- but I'd almost argue that Sleeping Beauty isn't actually about Aurora -- that the fairies are the protagonists

--Ariel wants to be human and see Eric, not marry him (initially, at least)

--Belle wants to save her father and see the world -- then falls in love with Beast

--Jasmine is actively trying to avoid marriage -- at least on someone else's terms

--Pocahontas may fall in love with John Smith, but as many critics have pointed out (1) she's also trying to save her people and (2) she doesn't actually marry him

--Mulan is trying to uphold her family's honor by taking her father's place -- like Jasmine, she runs away from the life that would be dictated by marriage and the matchmaker

--Tiana wants to open her own restaurant

--Rapunzel wants to see the "floating lanterns gleam" -- and only once she has done that does Flynn become her "new dream" (a dream that is inextricably connected to reuniting with her biological family and creating a happy, stable family unit)

--Merida, like Jasmine and Mulan, also firmly rejects marriage (for now)

--Elsa is completely unconcerned with marriage/romance, which leaves Anna as essentially the only princess who actively seeks out marriage (and look how well that turns out for her)

To say that each princess's goal is "trying to get someone to marry her" is misleading: very few of the princess protagonists are shown to have marriage on their minds. In a study on language, I'd be interested to know how many times the words "marriage" and/or "wedding" appear -- love, of course, is something different. 

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

(4) I'm very curious as to whether Fought and Eisenhauer's study includes the songs/music of the films. Their abstract -- reprinted here by The Language Log of UPenn -- isn't clear: in fact, the research on the compliments -- relegated to the last 1/3 of the article by Guo -- is given center-stage. 

Because here's the thing: Disney movies -- especially the princess movies -- are musicals. This is a point which Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario emphasizes in her article, "The Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney Princess" (one of my favorite pieces of Disney scholarship, because it actually articulates the view that the Disney princesses are important and central to their stories, moreso than the males). Do Rozario notes that the "success of The Little Mermaid took many by surprise, but the reasons for it are manifold. One of those reasons lies in the musical itself" (47). 

And the songs and soundtracks are just as important, if not more so, than the dialogue and plot. As Guillermo Avila-Saavedra argues, "the rhymes make lyrics memorable and therefore the message is more influential." Consider Frozen Fever: how many covers of "Let It Go" were there? how many viral videos of couples singing "Love Is An Open Door"? And what about those epic show-downs and collaborations between the Broadway casts of The Lion King and Aladdin?

I'm not ashamed to admit that I listen to the Disney station on Pandora radio almost every day: there's something about belting Disney songs while driving to work and running errands that's just fun. But as I think over the songs I butcher in the safety of my car, and as I think over the songs that I associate with each film, I come up with female-dominated music. 

Sure, there are some notable exceptions: Scar's "Be Prepared" and the Gaston-led "The Mob Song" are some of the best villain songs Disney produced, and I'm a sucker for "I've Got A Dream" from Tangled. But I have to wonder...if you looked at just the songs, or if you included the songs with the spoken dialogue, would the results of Fought and Eisenhauer's study change? Negligibly? Significantly? (After all -- Phil Collins' beautiful lyrics for Tarzan as well as Elton John and Tim's Rice music for The Lion King don't fall within the scope of this study: they're not princess films.)

Let's look at the Frozen soundtrack -- if a movie about two sisters only has women speak 41% of the time, does the music match up? And let me add--this is by no means a scientifically valid study; just some personal musings and observations:

• There are 9 lyrical songs on the soundtrack -- excluding the background score and Demi Lovato's cover of "Let It Go" -- totaling approximately 23 minutes and 4 seconds of singing time. (At a total running time of 1hr42min, that's a little more than 22.5% of the movie devoted to singing dialogue.)
• Of those 9 songs, 6 of them have a female vocalist credited as the lead: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, or Maia Wilson (who leads the trolls in "Fixer Upper").
• Of those 6 songs, 4 are exclusively sung by women ("Do You Want To Build A Snowman," "For The First Time in Forever," "Let it Go," and the reprise of "For The First Time in Forever.") -- together these songs total about 13 minutes and 26 seconds -- about 58% of the singing dialogue. 
• Three songs are sung exclusively by males: the opening song "Frozen Heart"; Tony-nominee Jonathan Groff's only song is the :50 second "Reindeer Are Better Than People"; and Josh Gad's "In Summer" -- together, these songs total 4.5 minutes -- about 19.5% of the singing dialogue.

So, they may only speak for 41% of the film, but they sing for at least 58% of the musical interludes -- and that's not counting their roles in "Love Is An Open Door" or "Fixer Upper."

I'm not saying this would hold up for every Disney Princess movie but, especially if the songs/music aren't included in the study, it might be worth investigating more. (And again--with movies like Aladdin, I don't anticipate it holding up.)

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

(5) Finally--even though Guo points out that it's "of course incomplete to judge a film just by the number of words women say," I think it should be emphasized that reducing anything -- any Disney film, any film, any book -- to one piece of numerical data runs the risk of oversimplifying the situation. 

This is not to say that quantitative studies aren't relevant or important -- they absolutely are. But sometimes, things can't be nicely reduced to objective, numerical data. For instance--Guo cites Dawn England in the Washington Post article: in 2011, England co-authored the study "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses," a widely cited study that attempts to objectively look at and code the behaviors of the princes and princesses in the Disney princess films. The complicating factor is that the behaviors are coded based on gender stereotypes: for instance, "assertive" and "independent" are seen as masculine behaviors while "shows emotion" and "nurturing" are seen as feminine behaviors. However--some behaviors are coded in ways that don't make sense: for instance, "curious" is seen as a "masculine" behavior while "fearful" is seen as feminine. "Being afraid" doesn't seem to be a particularly gender-specific characteristic to me -- and I'm curious as to why "curiosity" is seen as masculine, since the dangers of "feminine curiosity" seems like a well-worn trope (for example, Eve and the apple). 

But again--when you reduce the films to numerical data, you run the risk of ignoring many extenuating factors. 

For instance--women may have spoken more in the First Wave Princess movies, but:

(1) the villains were often female -- the Wicked Queen; Lady Tremaine; Maleficent -- which led to accusations of promoting female binaries (good girl vs. femme fatale) and female-on-female violence;

(2) the heroines in these first movies may talk more, but critics often lament their lack of agency and activity -- they're the passive, damsels-in-distress. 

So, if you the villain can't be female, the villain must be male, which increases the male presence in the supporting cast. 

But then what about the fact that these movies depict women existing in a male-dominated world? And not only existing but, arguably, triumphing in a male-dominated world? One of my favorite points that Do Rozario makes is that, yes, Disney movies often kill off the mother but "largely unremarked is the absence of a brother or other male heir" (52). At the end of the movie, the "father celebrates his daughter. Not one Disney father wishes for a son or remarks on the absence, implicitly condoning the disruption of patriarchy by a daughter" (53). Do Rozario is looking a select group of the princess films -- namely the ones where the heroine is born a princess rather than marrying into the title as do Belle and Cinderella -- but her point is valid: in terms of gender, the female ascends to a position of power. (Again--we'll leave discussions of race and class for another day.)

****

The responses to this story's viral nature are interesting, to say the least. While internet comments aren't exactly a reliable barometer, there does seem to be an outcry of "Who cares?" (And also lots of hopes that this isn't government-funded research, because it seems a waste of money.)

This is always a question I grapple with throughout the semester: there's always the person who claims that "watching Disney movies isn't a good use of college tuition money." But we're not just watching Disney movies: we're discussing them, examining the ideologies underlying them and, perhaps most importantly, gaining a sense of media literacy. That's what I try to emphasize to my students: I'm not asking you to hate Disney; on the contrary, I'm asking you to form your own, educated opinion about these movies -- which, like it or not, do reflect and effect the ideas we hold as a society. 

To that end, I think Fought and Eisenhauer have a really interesting research study going on -- and I can't wait to read the finished study. It's an interesting topic -- not just about Disney, but about what society believes and the media teaches about gender in general -- and I don't profess to have all, or even any, of the answers. But their study isn't important just to see what little girls are learning from these movies -- it's not only girls who consume Disney Princess movies. They may be the ones who wear the dresses and buy the dolls, but boys watch them too -- and discussions of masculinity are often left out. 

I'm going to end on a somewhat personal note: I think it's really important to note that, as academics and scholars and researchers, we can analyze these movies -- objectively and subjectively -- all we want. But it remains very difficult to say, with absolute certainty, that these films are "harmful" or "damaging." In the Washington Post article, Fought points out that girls aren't "born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls." 

So, yes. We can study the Disney Princess movies and draw conclusions about them. But, as Peggy Orenstein reluctantly concedes, "I have never seen a study proving that playing princess specifically damages girls' self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. And trust me, I've looked." 

Who knows what children pick up on when they watch Disney movies? Who knows how their families, friends, other media they've seen, the toys they have affect what they pick up on? After all, my favorite Disney movie as a child was The Little Mermaid--I went through a Snow White phase when I was really little, I liked Belle because she read books too, and I have vivid memories of making my little brother be Maleficent-as-dragon so I could play the triumphant, dragon-slaying Prince Philip. 

But Ariel? She was my favorite. After all, she was a swimmer (well, technically a mermaid, but still) and as someone who has always been very klutzy on land (much like Ariel when she first gets her human legs) but at home in the water, that mattered to me, who swam competitively throughout middle and high school. I also liked that Eric was an animal-lover -- it was very important to Mini-Me that Eric not only had a dog (Max) but that he clearly cared for him. But Mini-Me didn't focus on the relationship between Ariel and Eric -- it was part of the story, sure, but it wasn't why I loved the story. What resonated with me was that Ariel and her father were two stubborn people who bumped heads and disagreed and didn't understand each other -- but in the end, they worked it out. If Ariel and Triton could overcome his speciest view on humans and reconcile, then gosh-darnit, my father and I would be alright. I knew I wasn't a mermaid, and I knew my father wasn't an omnipotent ruler of the sea, and I didn't run away from home to seek escape from a sea-witch with a vendetta. This was a movie and those characters and problems weren't real: I was savvy enough to know that. But the resolution? The reassurance of the happily-ever-after between father and daughter? That was more real to me than singing crabs and magic spells ever could be -- and more important.